


Special Ops

by frankie_mcstein



Category: NCIS: Los Angeles
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-17
Updated: 2013-08-17
Packaged: 2017-12-23 19:07:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,228
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/930029
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/frankie_mcstein/pseuds/frankie_mcstein
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's a reason the LA office is called the Special Ops Unit. Actually there are two. There's the official reason, and then there's the real reason.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Special Ops

**Author's Note:**

> There's a blink-and-you'll-miss-it reference to child abuse. It's no worse than we have in the show so I doubt it's enough to trigger even the most sensitive of readers, but even so I don't want it to sneak up on anyone.
> 
> A fantastically quick beta job was done by DinerGuy so, while the characters belong to CBS and the story belongs to me, any mistakes are solely hers

Hetty had a lot of files. Some were cardboard or plastic and held papers or photos. Others were electronic and were brimming with .txt and .jpeg extensions. There were even occasional cassette tapes or .mp3s and in some, very tightly sealed files, were lurking video tapes and .mp4s, just waiting for the day Hetty decided to call in a favor, revisit an old case, or exact revenge for some ill-conceived act.

Some files held information on people or groups who were either dangerous, useful, or just intriguing. Strengths, weaknesses, personal traits. Even things like preferred foods or hobbies. Others were full of dates, events, and places. The 1992 DFR uprising in Africa and the actual casualty numbers. The real reason nine city blocks had been cordoned off in Chicago in 1989 while the media ran stories of a gas leak. The original blueprints for Fort Knox showing three extra rooms that had never been included in any other plan of the building. Only a handful of people in the world knew if the rooms had actually been built or not.

Each file, physical or electronic, was neatly labeled, tagged with its contents, carefully organized, and usually cross-referenced. The death of a CIA agent in Africa could be linked to a car crash in London by way of a robbery in Shanghai and a poison pen letter in Dubai, provided you knew where to look. The sometimes tenuous links between the files had been called a spider's web by more than one person and on more than one occasion. 

There were those who owed their lives to the information Hetty kept in her files and lived for the day she would call and they could pay her back. There were those who treated the hold she had over them with amused exasperation, knowing that no matter how she may threaten, she would never ask for something they couldn't supply. And, inevitably, there were those who would kill Hetty and anyone near her without so much as a millisecond's pause, in the vague hope that access to her files would die with her.

Having started when she was only ten years old and desperately looking for a way to stop her older brother from stealing and hiding her homework, Hetty had quite literally spent more time collecting information than she had spent on any other pursuit. One sleepless night hiding in Edward's wardrobe was all she'd needed. She'd seen him sneak his on-again, off-again girlfriend in through his bedroom window, closed her eyes and blocked her ears against the smothered gasps and moans, and made her first business transaction: her silence for his cessation of hostilities the very next morning.

Even while she was training with what was to become the first of many agencies, Hetty had found a use for the coagulation of information. Her handler had taken a dislike to her and started trying to sabotage her chances. Hetty had taken the fact that he often smelled of perfume, coupled it with his overly long lunches, and gone to him with her conclusion. In return for him giving her a fair chance, she would keep quiet about his affair. And if the man's wife 'happened' to find out a month or so after Hetty's placement within the agency was changed, well, sometimes things don't always go according to plan. That was a lesson Hetty had learned even before she had learned that knowledge was power.

And yet, with all the filing cabinets, discs, and memory pens to her name, there was one file she kept that didn't have any sort of location. It was stored in her mind, nothing was cross-referenced to it, and its label was a single, uppercase 'G'.

In the years between her disappearance and Hetty receiving her plea for help, Clara's file had been first closed, then redacted, and then finally destroyed. Such a casual attitude towards possibly useful information shocked Hetty; she never destroyed files unless there was no other option and the information was simply too dangerous to let it escape, but it was procedure at the time.

There were nights when Hetty dreamed that she had been more mature back then, that she had already learned the importance of disobeying the stupid orders. She would dream of two happy children, growing older under the watchful eye of their mother, while Hetty watched over all three. Sometimes this little dream family would suffer a horrible tragedy, the mother's smile would fade, the girl's cheeks would pale, the boy's eyes would grow dim. Other nights, she saw the children grow old and leave home, only to return with children of their own. One thing was consistent through these dreams regardless of how the story went: Hetty's mental file, file 'G', never needed to be created.

The reality was physically painful at times. She would catch a glimpse of some old, buried pain in the eyes of her lead field agent, and pages of 'G' would flip open without her meaning them to. She would see the list of foster homes, line upon line of addresses, changing every few months, sometimes every few days. Occasionally he would limp into the office, some new bruise or cut disfiguring his skin, and Hetty would have to blink to clear the images of the x-rays from her mind, fuzzy white on charcoal grey, long archived proof of the nightmarish childhood he had been subjected to. A childhood for which she blamed herself.

When he had first started working with the same agencies through which she had already worked her own way, she started thinking he would find a way to put his past behind him. Somewhere in those offices was a partner who would become a friend, a team who would become a family, and the man that she called her boy in the privacy of her own mind would finally feel safe. 

She kept careful tabs on him, each new assignment, each transfer neatly packed away in her mental file. It wasn't until he went missing that she realized her hopes for his future weren't panning out. His latest identity had been compromised, but no one had been able to get a warning to him. He had been missing for three days, long enough to make everyone think he was dead, and Hetty had sat at her desk and sorted through her file on him.

Just as she realized that he had been jumping from team to team for nearly a decade, her phone had rung. The message was short and terse. He'd been found. He was in a bad way. Then the call was ended. Hetty called in a lot of favors over the next week and by the time her boy was out of the hospital, Hetty had a new assignment all ready for him.

The brass called it special ops because her team took on the cases that other agents simply weren't equipped to handle. Hetty called it special ops because she had created it for her boy, to try to pay off the debt she felt she owed him. Every time she saw him laughing with his partner who was more like a brother, his teammates who were more like a family, Hetty added another page to file 'G', each one headed special ops, and each one marked as a full success.


End file.
